Mark Pilkington talks about the development of the Italo jungle thriller with a screening of Lenzi’s MAN FROM DEEP RIVER (1972) followed by a series of classic cannibal film trailers to uncover the genre’s roots in the West’s growing interest in environmentalism, atavistic cultures, lost worlds and the perils of the green inferno.

In the 1960s-70s, the relaxation of censorship, together with women’s greater social assertiveness, led to the appearance of a substantial number of art and/or exploitative films that explored male/female relationships through sexual power games. This lecture will examine the various ramifications of the period’s unfettered sado-masochistic fantasies.

Kim Newman will talk about Gary Sherman’s 1972 British horror film, Death Line (aka Raw Meat), highlighting the film’s political subtext, transgressive use of cannibalism as metaphor and for shock value, black humour, performance styles, relationship with American and other British films on similar subjects, and exploration of London lore and locations.

This lecture and screening by Jasper Sharp will look at how landscape and elemental conditions can be evoked to express dangerous forces existing beyond man’s perceptual and belief systems, but also, in contrast, how heightened psychological states can be given visual form through use of such timeless spaces, taking the viewer out of their comfort zones and back into nature at its most wild, mysterious and untamed.

In this evening’s discussion, acclaimed author Stephen Thrower (NIGHTMARE USA) will explore Franco’s ability to juggle the commercial and personal dimensions of filmmaking through his confrontational works of horror, sadism and erotic spectacle.

The Miskatonic London 2015 pilot semester has now wrapped, but we would like to invite all our graduates (those who were with us for the whole semester) to a screening of The Dead Eyes of London at the fantastic Masonic Temple in Liverpool Street on Saturday 4 July at 1pm (part of the East End Film Festival). This will be followed by a panel discussion on krimi films with Kim Newman, Jim Harper and Alex Fitch, after which the graduates will receive their Miskatonic diplomas from the hands of Kim Newman.

As part of Scalarama 2015, our first class of the fall semester features William Fowler talking about Antony Balch, an extraordinary figure of 1960s-70s British film, best known for directing Secrets of Sex (1970) and Horror Hospital (1973), and for his collaborations with William Burroughs.

From con artists to pranksters and moralists to martyrs, this lecture – based on the instructors’ book of the same name – aims to capture the untold story of the how the Satanic Panic was fought on the pop culture frontlines and the serious consequences it had for many involved.

Jim Harper explores the background and history of the Wallace krimi, from their beginnings to their long-term influence in Germany and beyond, discussing the charm and appeal of these quintessential European cult favourites.

To mark the launch of WE ARE THE MARTIANS, a new book of essays about Kneale and his work from Spectral Press, The Miskatonic Institute presents a unique celebration of the work of Nigel Kneale. A rehearsed reading of Kneale’s lost drama THE ROAD (featuring Jonathan Rigby and others), will be followed by an in depth discussion of Kneale’s work and influence by some of the book’s authors

This talk looks beyond the soundtrack at the role of composers, instruments, computers and other sound-making devices in horror films, revealing that the relationship between alien sounds and inhuman activity is not always as straightforward as one might expect.

The 1960s-70s saw copious amounts of on-screen self-flagellation, brutal witch-hunting, delirious possessions and sadistic exorcisms, culminating into the so-called ‘nunsploitation’ genre. This lecture by Miskatonic London co-director Virginie Selavy will explore the various ways in which desire, cruelty, power and religion are configured in the cinema of the period.

This lecture traces the history of the custom shoot – from its clumsy beginnings in video horror to the present facsimile death scenes – which occupies a unique space in the collective mind-set, one created and never occupied by the ‘reality’ of snuff films.

Writer and filmmaker Andrzej Zulawski, who passed away earlier this year, worked in different genres: war films (The Third Part of the Night), gothic horror (The Devil, Possession), melodrama (The Most Important Thing is to Love, My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days, La Fidelite), thrillers (La Femme publique, Cosmos), science fiction (On the Silver Globe), costume dramas (La Note bleue),crime films (L’Amour braque), erotic dramas (Szamanka) – even musicals (Boris Godunov). However, all of Zulawski’s films share the same fundamentally vulgar structure: the love triangle. This class looks at the love triangle fundamental to all of Zulawski’s films and squares it with this remarkable director’s life and loves.

FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992, directed by David Lynch and co-written with Robert Engels) was created to address unanswered questions in the seminal TV series TWIN PEAKS (1990-91), but instead it offered more puzzles and dream narratives to confound viewers. Its premiere in Cannes was met with boos and jeers from the audience, but over the years critical opinion of this challenging film has matured and developed. Maura McHugh will explore the symbols and themes that underpin FIRE WALK WITH ME and TWIN PEAKS, and will offer you a refresher course in its characters and strange happenings in advance of the new series of TWIN PEAKS which will materialise in 2017.

This lecture will explore how Australian horror cinema of this period incorporates a subversive streak that critiques Australian history and culture through the theme of revenge. This lecture will explore how Australian horror cinema of the 1970s and 80s incorporates a subversive streak that critiques Australian history and culture through the theme of revenge.

In this illustrated talk Jasper Sharp will explore the out reaches of Japanese fantasy cinema, from the embryonic trick films of “The Father of Japanese Film” Shozo Makino through oddball homegrown sub-genres such as the prewar “ghost cat” (bakeneko or kaibyô) films and the ama cycle of sexy pearl diver films, some long-lost Japanese takes on the movie monsters of Universal Studios, the pink film-horror of directors like Tetsuji Takechi and Kinya Ogawa and much, much more, all peppered with a liberal amount of clips of some truly bizarre titles that remain either unseen or unseeable to modern audiences outside of the country.

Taking a fresh look at the genre from 1931 through 1936, this class examines ‘happy ending’ horror in relation to industry practices and censorship. Early works like Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) and The Raven (1935) may be more akin to the modern Grand Guignol of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Hostel (2005) than many critics believe. Tracing the development of classic horror to the deployment — and subsequent censorship — of on-screen ‘gruesomeness’, Jon Towlson will illustrate the discussion with memos, letters and censorship reports from the studio archives and other research conducted for his new book, The Turn to Gruesomeness in American Horror Films, 1931-1936.

Often considered the bastard step-child of the theatrical motion picture, TV movies have long been relegated to the dusty corners of our childhood memories. However, despite its scorned status, telefilms could be thoughtful and, at times, subversive. This lecture offers an exploration into several facets of the made for television movie, surveying its cultural touchstones and analyzing the influence the telefilm had on Americans during the run of the network made for television movie produced between 1964 – 1999.

Haiti has held a special place in colonial imaginings of all that is macabre, sinister and maniacally savage, a land of irredeemable barbarism and “Voodoo Terror”. This class will trace a history of such representations, discussing how they continue to shape xenophobic and neo-colonial imaginings of Haiti as a country mired in superstition and incapable of enlightened self-governance, and the importance of the zombie figure for these “chimerical optics”.